Anwar Sadat

Anwar Sadat (25 December 1918-6 October 1981) was the President of Egypt from 1970 to 1981, succeeding Gamal Abdel Nasser and preceding Hosni Mubarak. Sadat was the first Arab leader to recognize Israel as an independent country, although he fought them in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In 1981 he was assassinated because of his peace treaty with Israel.

Biography
Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat was born on 25 December 1918 in Mit Abu al-Kum in al-Minufiyah, British Egypt. Sadat's mother was of Sudanese descent, and he was often criticized for not looking "Egyptian enough" and was called "Gamal Abdel Nasser's black poodle" while serving with him in the Egyptian Army as his right-hand man. Sadat assisted him in the 1952 revolution against King Farouk I of Egypt and he became his assistant after Nasser became the new President/dictator of Egypt. He became Vice-President in 1964 and again in 1969, and succeeded Nasser when he died of a heart attack in 1970. Sadat's first action was to continue Egypt's war with Israel during the War of Attrition and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, but his attempts to take back the Sinai Peninsula from Israel failed in one month in the latter conflict. Sadat later had a change of heart towards Israel and personally met with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1977 during the Camp David Accords, where he signed a peace treaty with Israel that granted Egypt's recognition of Israel as its own country. He also made good relations with the Kingdom of Iran, and he was called "dear brother" by Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

Death
Sadat's decision to recognize Israel and make peace with the Jews was highly-controversial in his country, where the Muslim Arabs were extremely hostile towards Israel for taking over the Sinai and Gaza Strip from their control. In 1981 he suppressed a coup caused by regional allies in Syria and Libya of the Soviet Union, but internal unrest continued. Soon, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization planned to assassinate him through a cell in the military, led by Khalid Islambouli.

While at the 6 October 1981 parade that commemorated the eighth anniversary of the Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War, he was killed with many other foreign dignitaries. Islambouli approached the grand stand where sat Sadat, Irish Minister of Defense James Tully, four US military officers, an Omani general, the Cuban ambassador, a Coptic Christian priest, and Egyptian intelligence chief Samir Helmy. Islambouli then proceeded to gun down these people with an AK-47, while Vice-President Hosni Mubarak was wounded. Omar Abdel-Rahman, the sheik responsible for ordering the death of Sadat, and several Egyptian jihadists such as Ayman al-Zawahiri were arrested for their role in his death. President Jimmy Carter of the United States and many other world leaders attended his funeral.